AAW Chapter Three: Nostalgia

Instructions

Chapter Three: Nostalgia The North Wing Plaza was bright with sunlight and noise. Students sprawled on the grass in clusters, laughing, tossing frisbees, dragging out the last hours of daylight. The air smelled of damp earth and blooming magnolias, undercut by the sharp tang of fresh asphalt. L. Collins walked the perimeter with her usual stride. Her posture was relaxed but upright, her expression arranged in a pleasant, neutral mask. As she passed a cluster of students, one of them waved. “Hey, Luci! You heading to the library?” She turned her head, offered a faint, practiced smile—just enough to register recognition without inviting further conversation. “Affirmative,” she said. “I have a briefing to prepare.” The student nodded, already turning back to their group. Collins kept walking. Near the east entrance of the library, a maintenance crew was repairing a ruptured irrigation line. The smell of wet soil was stronger here, mixed with something sharper—something that caught in her throat. She stopped. A coil of yellow rubber tubing lay discarded atop a stack of PVC pipe. It was stained, slightly kinked, unmistakably medical-grade. Her body responded before her mind did. Her breath caught, just slightly. Her fingers twitched at her side. The sound of the quad—voices, birds, distant skateboards—flattened into a dull, buzzing static. Then came the hiss. Not real. Imagined. A memory-sound. Pressurized air escaping a valve. The world fractured. She was no longer on the ground of Kingsbridge University, but standing outside an opened rusty steel door to a white room. Not a memory of herself—she wasn’t there—but she was in it. The walls were seamless. The floor was tiled in small hexagons, each one sloped slightly toward a central drain. Above, a grid of pipes ran along the ceiling, some yellow, some clear, all connected to regulators and pressure gauges. A steel table stood in the center of the room. Straps hung loose from its sides. A woman in a lab coat stood nearby, adjusting a drip line. Her back was turned. “Subject 115 is non-responsive. Begin secondary infusion.” A man’s voice, clipped and bored: “Increase the dosage. We need cortical activation, not sedation.” The hissing grew louder. Collins’ vision tunneled. Her heart kicked against her ribs, fast and irregular. Her hands curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. The woman turned, glanced toward the door—toward her. But there was nothing to see. Only a shadow in the threshold. The hiss became a shriek. Then: silence. The quad snapped back into focus. The sun was still shining. The students were still moving. The tubing was still lying on the pipe stack. Collins inhaled sharply through her nose. Held it. Exhaled. Her hands unclenched. Her shoulders rolled back, once, as if shaking off a chill. Her expression smoothed over, resettling into something neutral and unreadable. A student nearby glanced at her, concern flickering across their face. “You okay? You zoned out for a second.” Collins tilted her head slightly, mouth twitching into a faint, dry smile—the kind that suggested mild annoyance rather than fear. “Just processing,” she said. “Maintenance really needs to label their materials better. I was trying to remember if that tubing was potable-grade or not.” The student blinked, then laughed. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to mix those up.” Collins nodded once, already turning away. “Exactly.” She kept walking. Her pulse was still elevated. Her muscles still tense. The hiss of pressurized air echoed faintly in her skull, like a door shutting somewhere deep inside her. “What was that?” she murmured, not to herself, but to the air. Then, after a pause: “…Fear?” She turned away. Her expression remained neutral. But her jaw was tight, the muscles along her cheeks pulled taut beneath the skin. The sun was radiant. The air was still. Somewhere, in her sterile white world, a steel door tainted with rust remained opened.